Morning Read: Jobs, Cantwell Vs. ETFs

By Brendan Conway

Market check: It was the market’s worst week of the year, but that’s all about context: The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index shed only 0.74% for the week that just ended. Stock exchanges are closed today and there’s a half session in the bond market as the 8:30 a.m. monthly jobs figures approach. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires are expecting a gain of 203,000 jobs for March, down from 227,000 in February — which would be another (slow) step in the right direction.

Fund watch:Sen. Maria Cantwell, D.-Wash., is writing legislation to bar index funds and ETFs from the commodity markets, blaming those funds for the rise in oil and gas prices, Reuters reports. While this is plainly election-year theatrics, each election cycle throws up an unlikely crusade that ends up marching far beyond what was once thought possible. I’m looking at you, $1.4 billion United States Oil Fund (USO).

In the news: The “London Whale” hulking around credit markets, and spurring interest among hedge funds lately, is a low-profile J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) trader, the Wall Street Journal claims this morning. “Kavi Gupta, a trader at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote a message to investors Thursday about the mystery trader, saying hedge funds are accelerating wagers against ‘the large long,’ or bullish investor. ‘Fast money has smelt blood,’ he wrote,” according to authors Gregory Zuckerman and Katy Byrne.

About Focus on Funds

As exchange-traded funds and other investing vehicles have ballooned in number, the task of figuring out what works well and what doesn’t has only gotten harder. Barrons.com’s Focus on Funds looks under the hood of ETFs, mutual funds and hedge funds for overlooked values, actionable ideas and the latest pitfalls for fund investors.